


This Be the Verse

by liwellen



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Hopeful Ending, Ideation, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Illness, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Self-Esteem Issues, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 19:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11259021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liwellen/pseuds/liwellen
Summary: “You know that we would still love you, right? Even if you told us. Even if we knew.”In which Adam struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder.





	This Be the Verse

**Author's Note:**

> Caveat emptor.

A nightmare. The same harrowing vision. Adam jolted awake with a strange feeling in his chest, a terrible yet familiar sensation. He blinked once, twice; whatever he had just dreamt was already slipping away from consciousness, leaving behind only fear.

Adam swallowed hard, nearly choking on his own spit. He pressed his shaky fingers to his wrist to feel for his racing pulse. When he finally found it, he made himself breathe—slowly, achingly—and looked around him, forcing himself to settle back into his body: Those were white cotton sheets tangled around his (his, _his_ ) legs. That was Ronan’s shirt swaying on its hanger as the fan beat lazy circles above him. Those were the yellow curtains he drew last night. Those were his shoes, his books on the bedside table. That was his mug, his laptop, his jacket… This was his life. _His_ life.

When his breathing finally slowed, he heard Ronan make a soft sound in his sleep next to him. Unthinkingly, still feeling a bit disorientated, he pressed a kiss to one bare shoulder blade. Then, when the urge to move or scream or tear at his own skin became too much, he swung his legs to the side and got out of bed.

He tried to be as quiet as possible as he pulled his clothes on, a monumental task when his anger and frustration were growing rampant like wild horses inside him. He felt tainted, impure. He couldn’t even bear to look at Ronan, who slumbered on unsuspectingly, still chasing his impossible dreams. He left the house with the key held tightly in his fist so he would remember that he had it with him, so he wouldn’t have to check over and over again, reaching into his pocket three times, four times, five times, jagged edge cutting into his skin punishingly.

When he stepped outside, the air was cool and heavy with morning dew. Head down, he walked further away from the house, up the gravel roads and toward the hills near the stables. Somewhere in the distance a raven cawed proudly—Chainsaw in her morning flight. When he could no longer see the house, he stopped. Sticking his hands into the pockets of his jacket that were beginning to tear, he looked up at the blue sky, so clear that there was not a single trace of cloud to be seen anywhere, and breathed—a soft and weary exhalation.

All there was in front of him was a vast expanse of grass, of earth—something he would have described as nothingness before, but the sight of it soothed him now, though it also made his heart clench for how perfectly it seemed to encapsulate Henrietta. There was something about the Barns, something that made everything seem so limitless: the sky touched the earth, which touched the wildflowers, which in turn touched the old oak trees. It grounded him, made him feel a connection that seemed to give things meaning, like a hand had clear the view before him and he could see the purpose of all that was happening. It was the feeling that he had a place at Life’s table, and anything remained possible; the land had this way of comforting him.

And Adam loved this place, loved it more than he had thought he could the first time he had seen it for himself. He loved it for its lushness, loved it for its very enormity, loved it because it was Ronan’s. Every time he stood on this seemingly endless stretch of land, he was reminded of how small he was, how his multitude of obsessions and compulsions were really nothing at all in the grand scheme of things. To let them get the better of him was sheer stupidity, something that Adam Parrish adamantly refused to dabble with. He was fine. No, he was more than fine.

He was going to be all right.

Feeling absolved, Adam returned to the house, locking the door behind him and dropping onto the bench to take off his shoes. But the quiet inside of him didn’t last long—it never could.

As he sat there, his skin started to prickle once more. Clenching his hands into fists, he bowed his head to his knees and willed the dark feeling in his stomach to go away. But the ever-consuming sense of worry and self-doubt continued to snap at his heels—they had had a taste of his blood and they were hungry once more. Like a children’s story, the monster was tapping on the window, taunting: _Tap, tap, tap. Are you afraid? Tap, tap, tap. You’re already mine._

Finally he stood up and tracked back to the front door, his footsteps silent on the carpeted floor. He twisted the lock and pulled open the door, checking whether it was working (he already knew it was), then closed the door and locked it again, peering through the small gap to look at the bolt. He twisted it another time, then another. On his sixth repetition, he was startled by Ronan’s sleepy voice from behind him, sending his heart clawing out of his throat.

“Adam?”

He whirled around, trying not to look guilty, and saw Ronan standing in the doorway in nothing but a ratty pair of boxers, a confused expression on his face. “Did you go out?” he asked, evidently still only half awake.

Adam swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah.” He flushed when his voice cracked on the single word, and humiliation surged through him. “Yeah. I just got in.”

For a while they just stood there, staring at each other as his heart continued to pound like something mad. Then, finally, Ronan mumbled, “I kind of want pancakes.”

Adam’s lips quirked as a surge of relief flooded in his veins. He dropped his gaze to the carpet to hide his fond smile, something that came so reflexively now when dealing with Ronan. “Are we skipping ‘please’ today?”

He knew Ronan was rolling his eyes just from the sound of his voice as he corrected himself, “Please, please, _please_ can I have a fucking short stack?”

Adam sighed, feigning exasperation. He glanced up at him from under his lashes. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

Ronan looked as if he was about to throw a sharp retort, but then changed his mind. Instead, he said, “I’ll get Opal,” and then, as he left the room, “Don’t forget to lock the door.”

Something painful unfurl itself in Adam’s chest. As he watched Ronan disappear from his line of sight, it felt as if he had just sent him off on a voyage—off to somewhere he could not reach, somewhere he could not follow, somewhere that would always remain unknown to him, somewhere where boys did not stay up late night after night reading the same thing urgently and repeatedly despite crushing exhaustion simply because their brains persisted in questioning what they already knew—and he was left standing alone in his kingdom of black despair.

“I won’t.”

 

* * *

 

Before his discovery of the most honest sense of camaraderie and brotherhood; before MIT, or the Barns, or the safe place he called home in Cambridge; before the plane ticket to Boston or even graduating vapid Mountain View High, loneliness had long been Adam’s one constant. It was his sole companion growing up in the trailer park; it was the devil that set him apart from the rest of the world. It was a ghoul with long teeth and the vengeance of a jilted lover, and more often than not, Adam felt as if he were born ensnared in its jaws. Even as he got older, this loneliness persisted, though at some point it turned from something with which he had been saddled to a habit, and then finally evolving into a personal preference, a darkness that provided him unexpected solace.

He knew what other people thought of him: dour, practical, cold, aloof. But he did not mind. In fact, he felt strengthened by their assumptions, deriving a sense of satisfaction from the certainty that they had not realize how broken he truly was inside, like he had gotten away with something big and unfathomable.

It was also proof that he had learned his lesson, one that had been delivered with a sharp yank that had sent him knocking against the sink where he had been washing the dishes for the second time that night, and that he had learned it well. “If you wanna be crazy,” Robert Parrish had spat, “be crazy on your own time.” It was not a memory that could easily be erased, for it was the one thing (the only thing) that he had seen eye to eye with his father: he was damaged and this was beyond his control, but not everyone had to know about his defect, this cursed sickness that brought him such immense shame.

So Adam began to teach himself: He taught himself patience, to wait until he was alone before giving in to his impulses. He taught himself how to pretend he wasn’t cycling through the plethora of fixations in his head when he was in class, when he was at work, when he was doing his chores, when he was trying to hold a simple conversation. He taught himself how wearing himself out with menial tasks, like cleaning, was the best way to make his head shut up, to stop himself from dismantling every sentence and every word until he no longer trusted what he thought he knew was true anymore.

Most of all, Adam learned just how much rigor and discipline this immense task required. But he was good at both things; they were things that made sense, they were things that could be mastered, they were things he prided himself on—but all this also meant that whenever he slipped up, he would suffer intense bouts of self-hatred, experiencing angry bursts of thoughts that sounded all too much like his father. The task was exhausting, and it was painfully tedious, but he was good at it, so good that his family appeared to have forgotten about his problem soon after the incident, though in retrospect, it was more likely that they just hadn’t cared enough about him to remember.

Not unlike every kid with a less than ideal childhood, Adam had at some point in his life led himself to imagine that college would be when everything would turn around for him. He’d imagined that he would become stronger and better once Henrietta’s poison had left him, that his sickness might finally abandon him. But it didn’t turn out that way. Instead, it got harder—much harder.

He had to work more than before to hide his less rational self, to fight the inexplicable doubt and urges that threatened to consume him day after day after day. He was forced to confront the crushing realization that he would never be like everyone else, and discovered what it was like to be completely devastated. Days, hours, and minutes exhausted him. His discipline grew erratic. His thoughts scattered. It took him twice as long to get his work done, and on very bad days—there were many—he could barely formulate coherent sentences, mind choosing to analyze every single word or gesture until nothing made sense to him anymore. Adam could not pinpoint exactly when it happened, but before he knew it to be true, he just wasn’t so good at hiding it anymore.

His first year at MIT, the very year he met Gansey and roomed with him, was a true struggle. He had once romanticized the idea of sharing close quarters with someone else, some rich and handsome boy, who might, by association, make him rich and handsome too, only to find how much harder it was to pretend to be sane with an audience. Adam often stayed out late in the library so he could look through his notes again and again, until the librarian called the closing time and his eyes were burning from deep-seated exhaustion. There were dark nights where he would wait until he was sure Gansey was fast asleep before treading quietly to their communal kitchen to check the stove, or the oven, or the switches, or the smoke detector, and there were also hideous nights where he would crawl out of bed to count the contents of his backpack repeatedly, making sure everything he needed was where they should be.

Then the December incident happened.

It had been snowing since dawn that day, but that didn’t matter because every soul on campus was busy cramming for finals. Radiators rattled like prisons doors slamming shut, permeating the entire dorm with the dizzying smell of ramen and espresso. Adam was just about to leave the room for the kitchen when Gansey called after him, fumbling for his glasses that had been abandoned on the bedside table. He had been dozing into his textbook on his bed before Adam finally got up from his desk, wincing as his back cracked in protest after sitting for hours in the same position.

“Hold on,” Gansey said, and Adam paused, curious as to what was about to follow. But Gansey simply walked ahead of him, shirt untucked at the waist, and entered the kitchen—where the refrigerator was humming dangerously, and ripe peaches lay on top of the microwave like an invitation to fruit flies, and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels was sitting too close to the stove holding down a note that read: HENRY, I KNOW IT WAS YOU—and headed straight for the dishwasher. Adam did not know what else to do except stare in complete befuddlement. He had meant to do the dishes, but it appeared that Gansey had beaten him to it.

Gansey smiled at him sheepishly. “Sorry about the mess. I’ve just been so busy, but I know that’s no excuse. Thanks for cleaning up after me for the last couple of days, by the way.”

Adam stilled. He hadn’t thought Gansey would realize, seeing as he was used to having help around his house, and in truth, the cleaning had been unintentional (but wasn’t it always unintentional?). It just so happened that one night Adam had been convinced that he had seen a fat drop of oil fall onto the countertop when Noah, the nocturnal upperclassman who lived down the hall to whom Adam had grown close, had been making fajitas. He had tried to resist getting out of bed, fists clenched and arms crossed over his chest as he lay there staring at the ceiling, but gave up around four in the morning. One thing led to another, and like the worst kind of magic, Adam found himself doing the dishes because he could not stand the sight of them just sitting there on the countertop, the crumbs from Gansey’s favorite cookie from the deli around the corner clinging onto the blue ceramic surface.

“Although, to be fair,” Gansey was still saying, that smooth old money Virginia accent of his a perfect melody, “it’s been a dump here lately. It can be irking sometimes, I’ll admit. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. You rarely have a single hair out of place—but I suppose the place will stop being such a squalor once finals are over.” He broke into a bright grin, the lines on the sides of his eyes making him look all the more amiable but doing nothing to soothe the roaring in Adam’s head. “Hang in there, tiger.”

Humiliation and annoyance warred inside Adam. He felt all too much like a sticky five-year-old who had just been caught red-handed with a honey jar. He could argue, “It wasn’t me,” or perhaps say, “I only did it once, the rest wasn’t me.” But what was the point? He knew Gansey would know that he was lying—Adam had always been the only one who cared about replenishing paper towels and taking out the trash. Wouldn’t it be so much worse if they were forced to confront the truth, which was infinitely uglier?

Adam reached up and rubbed his shoulder with one hand, feeling a sharp phantom pain as his father’s words rebuked him once more, mixed in with a hysterical-sounding loop of _you’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy_. He suddenly remembered something else his father had said one gray morning, half-sober and annoyed by his mother’s severe hacking: “The poor can’t afford to be sick.” Something inside him dimmed and died as he found himself agreeing with his father once again.

Yes, sickness was a twisted form of luxury that Adam could not afford. And really, what right did he have to call himself sick? Did he not have full use of his arms and legs? Was he not able to form words with his own mouth, and look at what was before him with his very own eyes? Yes, he couldn’t hear out of one ear (the ugly result of cheap whisky, lost temper, and a hard smack to the face), but did that really give him a right to pity himself? He _could_ still hear after all. Did he really have a right to put himself on equal footing with everyone else who had suffered or was suffering more than he?

 _Selfish._ The word rang hollow inside him, feeling but not fully apprehending that sadness was only made worse by the knowledge that it was irrational.

Adam gave a vague response to Gansey, whose face fell and eyes grew intense ( _What does it mean? Does he already know? What did I say? What_ do _I say? Stop it—stop acting so strange_ ), and then closeted himself in their tiny bathroom. He gripped onto the sides of the sink tightly, feeling too shaky, too unhinged, and wanting it to stop. He needed it to stop.

 _Please_ , he thought over and over again. _Please. Please. Please._

From then on Adam learned to relearn—rigor, discipline, rigor, discipline—careful when he was in control, quick whenever he slipped. He knew he would never get better, that his days were always just going to be separated into good and bad, and that even the good days would be enervating. He knew he would always have to wake up and close his eyes to a musical taunt that was coded into him: _You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re crazy_ …

But Adam learned to live with all that—he had to—even though it was hard and he wanted to just give up at times, because he knew something that his friends would never understand (what most people would never have to appreciate to the fullest extent): some were simply born without the constitution for happiness. It wasn’t something for him to aim for. Nothing he had, nothing he could ever have, would be worth bartering for a single moment of joy, and he had come to accept this. He would work with what he had, all he could ever get, because although the truth was always hard to admit, Adam knew well enough that someone like him never got a happy ending.

 

* * *

 

“Hey.” Ronan’s voice brought Adam back to himself. He didn’t know how long he had been staring out the window, thinking. “You in there?”

Adam shook his head. “Sorry.” He dropped his gaze to the greasy plate of fish and chips on the table instead (Ronan’s treat; Adam was getting better at picking his battles). “I was just— Do you remember if you turned off your headlights?”

Ronan grunted. “Probably. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. We’re leaving soon anyway.”

That was not true, but he couldn’t really say that Ronan was lying either since his perception of time had always been skewed. Ronan was perpetually too early or too late, both of which led him to sulk.

They were going to be at the diner for at least another hour, Adam knew. It had been forever since they last saw each other, seeing as he’d desperately been trying to meet his deadlines, and Ronan and his brothers had been busy with the conversion of their family farm into an actual, profitable business. Adam had missed him sorely, and of course, there was always something endearing about seeing Ronan Lynch do normal things on normal dates, like sitting in a tiny booth in a run-down twenty-four-hour diner that served surprisingly good food, and holding hands under the table, knees knocking into each other—all this to say that Adam did not want to ruin things by walking out to check on Ronan’s car, or make up some lame excuse so they would leave much sooner.

He did not realize he was zoning out again until Ronan waved his fork in front of his face. “Where’d you go?” Ronan joked, but his voice sounded thin, strange.

The question, though simple, exhausted Adam somehow. “Sorry.” He pulled his hand away from Ronan’s, rubbed at his eyes. “My schedule’s been pretty messed up. I’m usually asleep at this time, so it kind of feels like I’m switching time zones, I guess.” Before he could catch himself, he glanced out the window again.

“Well.” Ronan pressed his legs closer to Adam’s, seeking contact. “As long as you come back, right?”

And just like that, something inside Adam broke. It took every inch of effort for him to turn back to Ronan, to try to give him an easy smile, to unknot himself and be reassuring, to be the person that Ronan needed. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Adam did not look out the window again for the rest of the night. But when they were in the car going down Memorial Drive, he realized that he had peeled off so much of the skin around his thumb that he’d been bleeding the entire time. For a while he just stared at the dry flakes of blood, then curled his hand into a fist, sending a fresh spark of pain through him as he did so. He shoved it into his pocket.

Out of sight, out of mind. But the pain still lingered.

 

* * *

 

Noah had been the first to know, the first to mention it.

He’d picked it up in Adam’s first year, and in retrospect, Adam shouldn’t have been so taken aback—beneath the playful exterior, Noah had always been uncannily observant. He had had to learn that not everyone could see what he saw, had had to kick the habit of poking fun, no matter how harmless he thought his jokes to be. It had been a steep learning curve, but a necessary one. It had ruined too many relationships, made too many personal cuts that were hard to forgive. It was the reason he was still living in the dorms even though he was a junior, instead of having moved out with friends.

For all his life Adam would remember it happened on a Friday, because that night had started off the same way it did every other week: Gansey bashfully asking to have the room to himself to skype with his Mary Washington girlfriend with the weird name, Blue Sargent, and Adam having to bum in Noah’s room instead.

That night he watched Noah remove the restrictor lock on his window and slide it wide open. He lit a joint, took a hit, then pointed it accusatorily in his direction. “You know what your problem is?” he asked, as he always did.

Adam, as _he_ always did, wrinkled his nose and twisted away from the pungent smoke. “Which one? I have so many.”

“Too much math!” Noah practically shouted, rolling his eyes at the very last word.

“ _What?_ ”

“Jesus, math with numbers and shit. Not _meth_ , you silly billy.”

“Oh.”

“You engineering bastards are all the same.” Another inhale, Noah’s eyes glinting in the light from the table lamp next to them. “You boring assholes think the humanities are a waste of time. Philistines!”

“I’m not a philistine,” Adam protested, even though Noah _was_ right. The aerospace engineering students, at least, _did_ laugh at the arts majors, and although Adam rarely partook in that himself, he could understand where they were coming from, often experiencing strong urges to set something on fire whenever Noah and Gansey got into heated philosophical discussions right in front of him when all he wanted to do was numb his brain cells with some reality television in the common room after a long day. “Back me up here,” one of them would always turn to him and say, and Adam would always just blindly grunt out an agreement, deeply uninterested. Now, feeling the need to prove himself, he said, “I read, too.”

“Wow,” Noah deadpanned, then grunted when Adam socked him in one bony shoulder.

“I know Latin. And I’m doing a bit of French now, too. That cultured enough for you, you elitist fuck?”

Noah let out a funny squawk. “Latin! No wonder Ronan loves you.” Adam willfully ignored the blush that had bloomed across his cheeks at the word _love_ , but before he could make a snide remark, Noah continued in a sensible voice, as if Adam were a very small child, “And there’s nothing elitist about art. Nothing! It’s for the people. The common good, if you like.”

“Oh, yeah?” Adam folded his arms over his chest. It was getting cold in the room. “So who owns most if not all of them? Who’s buying and selling?” He does not add, _It sure as hell isn’t someone like me._

Noah pulled a face and tsked. “‘Buying and selling.’ Why do you have to make it sound so clinical?” He scratched the side of his nose. “And most art collectors lend them out to museums and stuff, so people get to see them for free. There you go—common good.”

Adam raised his eyebrows. “ _Free?_ They make you buy a ticket, and even if they don’t, they ask for a donation. In what universe is that free?” Somehow, being with Noah always brought out this side of him—argumentative, indignant, and righteous. Once, at a mutual friend’s party, Adam had for some reason gotten into an intense debate about pharmaceutical companies with Noah and a couple of other undergrads they both despised (the kind who were blatantly racist but still found it in their conscience to act wounded when pointed out to them), and a girl had leaned over to him and asked loudly, drunkenly, “Are you, like, a libertarian socialist?” Adam wasn’t, but he might as well be one whenever he was with Noah.

Noah just laughed and shook his head. He put out his joint and dismissed the subject altogether, “I can’t believe I had no idea that you knew Latin. I was never good at it, absolutely hated it in school. _Amo, amas, amat_ —blah, blah, blah. ‘Mr. Czerny, second declension, please.’ ” Noah made a face, really getting into it now. “Just hated it! And every passage they tell you to translate has to do with daughters and slaves, did you realize that? It’s violent and boring, is what it is. Just how it’s capable of being both at the same time is the only great thing about it, if you ask me. French, however, I like. Rousseau, Voltaire… I think it’s just better for you. The language of love, _non_? God knows you could use a bit more romance in your life,” and without a doubt, Adam knew that was meant as a jab at his and Ronan’s date at Shake Shack on his last trip back to Henrietta. Then Noah’s playful amusement slid off his face, as though he was hit with a sudden burst of inspiration. “ _La passion comblée a son innocence_ ”—he waved his arm, nearly breaking Adam’s nose—“ _presque aussi fragile que toute autre_.”

Adam stared. “Christ, you know you’re being such a cliché right now, don’t you?”

Smiling, Noah threw his arm around him. “You wound my delicate white boy feelings. How else am I supposed to show off my intellectual prowess, hmm?”

“Quietly and away from me,” Adam suggested gravely.

Noah scoffed and let go of him. “Rude.”

For a while they just sat there in companionable silence looking out the window, watching two guys piggyback each other in turn in the courtyard. When Adam leaned down to turn up the heat, he heard an uncharacteristically quiet voice say, “It’s not as bad as you think, you know.”

Adam froze, but Noah did not or perhaps chose not to notice; he simply got up, closed the window, and kicked off his shoes, climbing into bed with an old man’s groan. Adam kept his eyes on the two figures outside, spinning now and both yelling blissfully, even as Noah turned to face him, his cheek ghostly pale against the dark shade of his pillow. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I’ll keep your secret. But Adam, you know that it doesn’t matter, don’t you?” When it became clear that Adam was not going to say anything, he pressed on, “You know that we would still love you, right? Even if you told us. Even if we knew.”

Adam breathed out shakily, squeezing his eyes shut when they started to sting. “Stop.”

A few heartbeats later, Noah murmured, “You’re stronger than you think,” and then, nonsensically, “Don’t throw it away.”

When Adam looked over, Noah had already drifted off to sleep, face etched with a certain calmness he did not share.

“Good night,” Adam said quietly, and he turned off the light, plunging them straight into darkness.

 

* * *

 

It was not often that Adam could afford to go back to Henrietta, not that he had ever expected himself to even want to go back in the first place—he’d practically sworn off the place the moment he’d arrived in Boston. The first time he had voluntarily spent his hard-earned salary from two of his part-time jobs on the cheapest plane ticket he could find, no one had been more incredulous than he. But each time, the minute he arrived home, he found himself remembering why he had missed it while he was away, how Ronan had helped replace the bad memories with good ones.

His days—warm, honeyed days—were spent at the Barns in a terribly domestic fashion: sleeping in until the afternoon sun formed a great halo around the curtains, taking Opal to class or her Ranger meetings, sorting Ronan’s papers at his impossibly messy desk (Adam could almost swear Ronan left it that way on purpose just to screw with him), proofreading essays on his ancient laptop as it whirred in protest for a bit of money, and taking long naps on the living-room couch until Ronan came home from whatever he had had to do earlier that day. What Adam also did, without Ronan ever having to ask, was visit Aurora at the hospital, though seeing her in that sterile place always made his stomach churn uncomfortably.

Sending Aurora there had begun as a compromise between Ronan and Declan after she had gone missing for four hours, only to be found in the middle of the highway by the police—she had been trying to find her way home. There was no question that Ronan always tried to keep her close, tried to keep her safe, but as much as he wanted his world to revolve around her, as much as he’d tried to make it that way, it was far too difficult. He could not always tell when things were good or bad because Aurora was a blank canvas unless she was in the midst of an episode, speaking tirelessly, urgently, nonsensically of dreams; and at the end of the day, he was just a son who wanted to believe that his mother was well, but there was much he could not do.

Ronan had had to learn the hard way that sometimes things just did not get better. Instead, he had to be content with what he had. Even Ronan Lynch, it seemed, could not win every single fight. So he asked for help when he knew he could not help, even though Adam knew it pained him to do so each time. These days Aurora was at the hospital as often as she was at the Barns, but she never complained; it would be unlike her sweet nature to do so.

Adam could not fault Ronan for sending her away, but every time he saw her within those walls, even her smile, the way her eyes lit up in acknowledgement the moment she sighted him, could do nothing to ease the ache in his heart. In this lifeless place, Aurora’s gentleness was tinged with wariness. Though she still saw things that would forever remain inexplicable to everyone else, she did not mention them. “Don’t indulge her,” was the doctor’s rule, and each time Adam saw him or any of the nurses, he had to swallow his anger at them, his anguish for her. Because how could this isolation, this trepidation, be what was right? How could loneliness be the proper solution, when he knew exactly what it was like to feel as if he were about to burst at the seams with things only he understood, and he just wanted _so badly_ to say something?

Aurora sensed this in him somehow, and maybe it was because she pitied him in return for his inner turmoil that she began confiding in him about one impossible thing after another in a hushed voice as they made slow circles in the yard arm in arm. And Adam told no one. Not even Ronan. He knew it shouldn’t, that it was messed up he felt this way, but her telling him comforted him. It assured him that she knew she was not alone and that she had someone she could trust; someone who wasn’t trying to cure her, but simply trying to help shoulder the burden of sickness and truth. Certainly, he admired her for her courage. Not everyone could say something—he knew he couldn’t. He wanted to, sure, but trying to explain his thoughts would be like trying to describe color to the blind, music to the deaf, hieroglyphics to the layman. He did not know how, and because of this, he could not begin to try. On his own troubles, his demons had stolen his voice.

He knew helplessness, and he knew loneliness. That was why he held on to Aurora—not because of Ronan, or that she was the kind of mother he had yearned for his entire life, but simply because he wanted to give something he did not have, what he could not imagine himself ever having. Adam gave her understanding.

He gave her a friend.

 

* * *

 

Fairy lights blinked in the dark like fireflies, champagne glasses clinked and clinked in the next room, and a burst of laughter sounded just as the music reached its crescendo. Bit by bit, Adam took it all in.

Such happiness was rare and he felt the need to capture every moment, every second before everything slid away from him. He was warmed by the scene in front of him, sinking deeper into the soft cushions in the Gansey household as he covertly ran his hand along Ronan’s arm again and again, feeling goosebumps rise in his wake: Noah was singing something tuneless as Blue and Gansey tried to dance to it, looking like two kids at prom having the time of their lives, while Ronan whistled along to Noah from time to time. Adam marveled at how unlikely their friendship was, how malleable, what with Ronan and Blue in Virginia, Noah and Gansey now sharing an expensive loft in Cambridge quirkily named Monmouth Manufacturing, and Adam in his own embarrassingly small apartment near campus despite their incessant coaxing to just move into Monmouth already, goddamn it.

It was only the twenty-third, but it might as well be Christmas Day itself. Adam’s heart was full to the brim. He did not want to move from where he was pressed against Ronan, head resting on the other’s shoulder, thigh pressed against thigh, but it was almost midnight and the five of them would be heading to the bedroom they were sharing soon to camp out in their rather impressive blanket fort. He did not have much time.

Reluctantly, he pulled himself away, immediately eliciting a disgruntled noise from Ronan. “Where are you going?” he asked, having clasped onto Adam’s wrist as soon as he had felt the movement.

Adam kissed him on his temple in an attempt to placate him. “Just a sec,” he told him.

“Don’t leave.” Ronan gazed at him, his focus singular. “Where do you keep going?”

Adam resisted a flinch, forced himself not to take those words as a reprimand. “I’ll be right back,” he promised, then inelegantly extricated himself from Ronan’s hold, pretending not to notice his troubled frown.

The drunken conversations surrounding the house grew fainter and fainter as Adam climbed his way upstairs. On his way down the hall, he ran his hand along the red wallpaper, the sturdy oak table, the crystal lamp—rich things filled with history that he would never have.

He closed the door behind him when he reached the room, making sure to turn the lock. Kneeling, he took out his backpack from inside the blanket fort, and sighed as he sat down with it between his legs. He took a deep breath, eyes sliding shut before blinking open again. Then, finally, he unzipped it—Pandora opening her terrible box.

One, two, three, four, five…

 

* * *

 

When Adam first met Ronan Lynch, brooding and scowling as he helped Gansey move in, there was no way he could have known that he would end up feeling so much for that peevish boy one day.

They got on each other’s nerves at first: Ronan was always pounding on the door while Adam was still asleep (he still did not know how he managed to get past the main entrance), he ate in their room and left greasy food on Adam’s desk, he listened to music that was way too loud, he laughed at the bleakest things, he mocked their class difference, he called him names, he spoke Latin casually, he stayed even though Gansey had to go to class, and he walked around with a fucking _pet raven_.

Adam had tried not to let his annoyance show, because he was not exactly close to Gansey then, especially not when there was an elephant in the room—more specifically a sulky asshole in a leather jacket—with them, but it must have been written on his face anyway because Gansey had apologized, unprompted, after Ronan had finally left their room quarter past midnight.

“I hope you don’t mind Ronan being around so much. He doesn’t have much back home.” A pause. “To be quite honest, I think he’s lonely.”

That night found Adam unable to sleep. He spent every waking minute hating Gansey for making him feel like the world’s biggest jerk, and then hating himself for feeling bad in the first place because was he not justified in being aggravated at how annoying Ronan was?

But it did get easier after that: They made an effort to be less hostile to each other. They started laughing at the same jokes. They drove around in Ronan’s expensive rental. They made crazy moves on abandoned bicycles in the parking lot. They talked even when Gansey was not around, trading places they had been in Henrietta, places where their lives could have intersected, endlessly amazed that they had never, to their memory, crossed each other in that often claustrophobic place that had witnessed their transformation from boy to man. And now there were so many things Adam knew about Ronan that he kept safe the way he would with a token in his breast pocket. Some things were public knowledge—things he had already known before they finally kissed in the Barns on Ronan’s birthday—and some were less significant than others but important to him all the same. Together they plotted a map to some sweet, unknown destination.

Ronan Lynch dropped out of Aglionby Academy in his senior year and his only regret was not doing it a lot sooner. He had two brothers, Matthew and Declan, one that he loved and another that he loved to gripe about, but they were fiercely loyal to each other all the same. He, along with Declan’s help and enough power and money, adopted Opal (there was a complicated history between Ronan and the young girl that Ronan still found hard to explain, and it took a long time for Adam to piece together the story, though without any certainty as to whether what he had was complete). He took good care of his mother, who suffered from psychosis and was often in and out of the hospital. His father died when he was only sixteen—he had been the one to find the body. He owned and ran his own farm, even though he was only twenty years old. He spoke wryly of things that he enjoyed. He loved his car, which had been his father’s,  as if it were his own child. He could sing and play the bagpipes. He rescued animals before releasing them back into the wild, though sometimes he kept the more helpless ones, unable to let go. He volunteered at the church and bought Girl Scout cookies. He was sweet and nervous when it came to romantic gestures, but still offered them with an eagerness that was often overwhelmingly touching. He was shy when he smiled. He blushed like a five-year-old. He kissed with his whole body. Most of all, he was earnest and kind and brave.

But there were also things that were hard to talk about, things that Ronan had been adamant that Adam knew before they could move past the point of friendship, things that were dark and never to be used against each other no matter how terrible their fights got.

Ronan Lynch had been arrested for street racing, and then again for getting into a fight with the local dealer, Kavinsky—mistakes that would later cost him in the adoption process, even though Declan had made every effort all those years ago in making sure that nothing would stick. He once grappled with shame so badly that he could not step inside a church—he did not even let himself pray. He had been in rehab (would, years later, call those days the hardest), and he was a recovering alcoholic. Diligently, he went to all of his AA meetings.

When Ronan had told Adam about all of this, he had looked embarrassed but never ashamed, and although Adam would never say it out loud, because it sounded too condescending even to himself, he was proud of Ronan; he was proud of the person Ronan had grown up to be, all the things he had overcome. But this pride was tinged with sadness as well. Ronan was flawed, certainly, cruel even sometimes, but it was not inherent in him the way it was with Adam. His defensiveness and volatility were man-made, created by some of the most excruciating circumstances, and though Adam knew better than anyone else that the world was hardly fair, he still had a hard time accepting how it was that someone like Ronan—someone who, beyond his tough exterior, was least deserving of it, someone the complete opposite of him—had had to go through such trials in his initiation to adulthood.

Ronan deserved better, and that was the crux of it. Adam trusted he could do all right for himself as long as he worked hard, but opening up his world to someone else, opening it up to Ronan, introduced too many unknown variables, and he could really only examine what he was and what he could give as he wandered on blindly, and the answer was and always would be that he was damaged. There was no room in his crazy little world, and even if there were, he would never bring Ronan into it—he did not deserve that. What Ronan did deserve, however, Adam could not imagine himself ever being able to give. He knew this, but he was still too selfish to let go.

There was no way he could ever tell Ronan about his condition. How would he start, anyway? How could he make Ronan stay without having to beg? _I’m ruined but will you please stay? I’m ruined but can you find it in your heart to look at me the same way? I’m ruined but will you please love me?_ Because Ronan _would_ leave if he knew. Of course he would. Adam would, too.

He could never tell Ronan about the time he had a nervous breakdown in class in tenth grade. Tears had started streaming down his face as he pushed himself to carry on with his math homework anyway, feeling not sadness but annoyance at his blurred vision. All he could think about was finishing his work before he had to go home, because his father had just been laid off and now spent the day in the trailer after wasting his nights at the bar. _Just one more,_ he thought. _Just one more, just one more._ In the end, it took two teachers to get him on his feet as everyone else stared because he had been so adamant about finishing that he simply refused to leave his desk. He was fine. Couldn’t they see? He just had to finish his work, then it would stop. Why weren’t they listening? Why couldn’t they understand? Everything felt like a never-ending nightmare as they sent him off to the nurse’s office. In there he finally noticed that his hands were trembling, and he shoved them under his thighs, shaking his head when he was offered juice. It was Nurse Gwenllian who was there with him that day, an unnerving middle-aged woman who always had lipstick stuck on her teeth and scared him and most of the student body, and it was Nurse Gwenllian who was with him every other time since.

The day she stopped asking whether she should call his parents, she stared at him with her deeply unsettling eyes and said, “It’s hard, isn’t it?” And when Adam did not answer, she leaned in closer and whispered, “I know a way to make it stop. Can you keep a secret?”

Adam froze, completely helpless, and Nurse Gwenllian took that as an affirmative. Her eyes swept over the room quickly, and then she rolled up her left sleeve. Inch by inch, the scars revealed themselves under the harsh light.

“It will help,” she told him. “Trust me.”

But Adam never could bring himself to do it. A large part of him could not even begin to understand why anyone would hurt themselves that way, when _he_ was constantly trying to stop from getting hurt back home, where beer bottles were sharper than any blade.

Not long after that, Nurse Gwenllian was dismissed. There was a pending lawsuit against her after one of the honor roll students who had taken her advice had cut a vein. No one could find out what happened to her after.

No, Adam could never bring himself to do it. Yet sometimes, after life in the trailer park had become his past, sometimes when he was desperate for a cure, he would find himself staring at sharp objects, and her voice would come, a siren call— _It will help. Trust me._ _I know a way to make it stop—_ as if he had become so accustomed to violence that it was now in his nature to always be drawn to it, like hell with no escape. The thought saddened him; it disgusted him.

Then he would walk away.

 

* * *

 

Adam was losing him.

He had begun to feel Ronan drift further and further away from him not long after Christmas, a terrible chill growing between them as the calls dwindled and the texts turned curt. And even though Adam had always known that this was coming—because, really, who was he kidding?—it still hurt like a knife to his gut. And maybe it was a bit masochistic of him to ask Ronan on one of their now rare calls whether he should go home for his spring break even though he did not have the money to make that trip, because at Ronan’s cool reply, “Do whatever you want,” he had felt satisfaction underneath the pain. _There_ , he thought. _You were right. It won’t be long now._

He could sense that his friends were trying not to interfere, though Noah was doing a poor job: he must have suffered more than a couple of bruises from Gansey’s intense elbowing. He knew he should be touched by their concern, but really, he only felt embarrassed. He imagined how the structure of their friendship would crumble once the inevitable happened, how he would be responsible for the total confusion— _après moi, le deluge._ He would have to give it a new shape despite, or in spite, of what he felt, and he was reluctant to do it, selfishly so, and this caused him to feel so ashamed. Even as his mind cycled back to the lazy mornings, the comfortable silences, and the warmth of forgiveness after each petty argument, he hated himself for trying to have something that he was never meant to have in the first place, for his own arrogance and conceit, for trying to cheat his way out of a question just because he did not like the answer. He was no magician, after all. Happiness was never in the equation.

Then Adam woke up one morning and it was as if lightning had struck. He thought, if he already knew how this was going to end, if the inevitable was already inevitable—why wait?

And so he picked up the phone.

 

* * *

 

Adam’s test was on Tuesday; it was all he allowed himself to think about.

He ran through formula after formula as he went about his old, wearying life: as he bought himself the cheapest cup of coffee, as he settled in the quietest nook he could find in the library, as he chewed on his tasteless chicken sandwich, as the day turned to dusk and then night, as he trudged his way back to his little apartment, as he squinted in the dark to fit his keys into the squeaky main door, as a group of drunken girls giggled past him while he collected his mail, as the dark, filthy elevator clanged its way up to his floor.

He did not let himself acknowledge the hollow sensation in his chest for one second, the profound sense of loneliness. He did not let himself feel anything. Not until he rounded the corner and caught sight of who had passed out at his door, then it all came pouring down like torrential rain.

Adam stood there in the dingy hallway, simply staring for a long, long while before sheer panic seized him. Because Ronan wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving at all.

Adam broke into a run then, nearly dropping his bag that had slipped off his shoulder. Yet when he was on his knees next to the unmoving body, he could not bring himself to touch. His hands were frozen and it was becoming impossible to breathe. The terror was palpable. It was choking him to death.

Then, as if someone decided to have mercy on him, Ronan inhaled deeply, eyelids fluttering like wings before he finally woke, blue eyes taking in nothing until they landed on him. There, the world tilted itself the right way again. Air returned: in and out, in and out—life making up for lost time.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ronan croaked out, voice laden with sleep.

What a strange feeling it was, watching Ronan grow more and more alive as his terror from just moments ago felt more and more ridiculous to him.

“Nothing.” Adam dropped his gaze, then got up to unlock his door, taking longer than usual as his hand had started shaking. “Nothing.”

Ronan scoffed, full of scorn. “Yeah, right.”

It was a relief when Adam finally got the key in. He twisted it with more force than necessary and pushed open the door, catching it at the last minute to stop it from hitting the wall. An argument was on the horizon and they needed to do this inside. Yet, despite knowing this was going to get ugly soon, for just one second, as he stood there watching Ronan kick the door shut and take off his jacket in the tiny space, it felt like everything was normal between them again. Like it was just Ronan on one of his visits. Like he didn’t need an excuse to wrap his arms around him, to kiss him.

Adam made himself look away, stepping further into the room to flip the lights on, but really just needing the space to gather himself. “Why are you here, Ronan?” he asked when he could finally trust his voice not to betray him, and knew that he sounded cold.

Adam did not need anyone to tell him that Ronan was supposed to be under watch, that somewhere Gansey—who had been flying back to Henrietta with increasing frequency after what had happened—was going to go crazy the moment he realized that Ronan was not with him. Watching Ronan’s face turn blank, he hated knowing that he was the one who taught him that, hated seeing proof that he was no good for him.

“I want to know why,” he said.

Adam matched his impassivity with his own. “You know why.”

“No.” Ronan’s gaze was unwavering. “No, I don’t think so.”

_I can’t do this anymore. This isn’t what I wanted._

“You know why,” Adam repeated, insides shaking from growing nerves.

_This was a mistake. I can’t keep going back. Not for you or anyone else._

Finally, a fracture in Ronan’s calm façade. “Don’t give me that bullshit,” he snarled.

_I have to move on. I can’t give you what you need._

It was true that Adam had not been honest with Ronan, but he had thought that was best—he still did.

“I think you should go,” he said, each word burning his mouth like acid.

Ronan looked hurt, then plain angry. “Well, I don’t fucking think I should.”

Something inside Adam cracked, and he hunched his shoulders, feeling defensive. “What else do you want from me? I said everything I had to say.”

Ronan snorted. “Yeah, you said a lot of things all right.”

Adam squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t want to fight.”

“I’m _not_ looking for a fight.” But the way Ronan gritted out those words suggested otherwise, and he seemed to know it, too. For a moment, both refused to speak, then Ronan dropped his rage, body deflating like a child’s balloon; suddenly he just looked tired.

He said, quietly, “I want you to do it again. But say what you really want to say this time.”

“Ronan,” Adam started, but the rest just fell away—he had no idea how to continue.

“Go on.” Ronan gave him a smile, a damn brittle thing. “I’ll even help.”

“Ronan,” Adam said again, this time with no intention for anything to follow, simply wanting him to stop—something was screaming inside his head, panicking and asking for it (something, anything) to stop.

“Were you ashamed of me?” Ronan asked, and the moment his voice cracked, Adam felt it in his chest like a fucking gunshot. He was so shocked by the question that he could not speak. Ronan, however, was not expecting him to.

“Were you waiting for someone better to come along?” he continued, sounding much more confident this time, tragically so.

“I don’t—”

“Did you even like me?” Clinical, like the question had been poked at for a lifetime.

“You have—”

“Because it was never about Henrietta, was it?” Ronan said tonelessly. “It was me.”

Adam couldn’t help it—he snapped, “Jesus, Ronan. It wasn’t like you weren’t going to do it anyway.”

And just like that, Ronan did not look so sure anymore. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

Jaw clenched, Adam tried to conceal his mounting self-hatred but knew that he was losing the battle. “Forget it,” he said, his accent curling each letter, adding to his frustration. “It doesn’t matter.”

Ronan argued—he was always arguing—“I don’t fucking think so.”

A sudden wave of darkness, the urge to yell and hurt and smash something against the wall, slammed into Adam then, so intensely that he could almost black out from it. And that _scared_ him. He hadn’t felt this way in a long time, this out of control; he did not trust himself, did not trust his own hands.

He took a few steps back, further into the room, away from Ronan. “I did what had to be done,” he said. “It was going to happen anyway.”

Ronan’s eyes were by now wilder than ever. Everything about him was so charged that he looked like a powerhouse at full steam before it shorted. His rich accent put Adam’s to shame even as he hissed, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

 _End it_ , some part of Adam screamed, _end it right now_. Then a second voice, the voice of reason: _I will._ Two simple words, but it did the trick to soothe him. He sucked in a deep breath steadying himself, then he said, flatly, “We had nothing to say to each other anymore. You needed something that I couldn’t give.”

Ronan screwed up his eyes. “Why do you keep saying that?”

Curiously, the more frustrated Ronan appeared, the calmer Adam felt. He recognized it as a defense mechanism of his: to grow more and more detached from a situation, to stay on the side of logic to save himself from the ugliness emotions seemed to always entail.  Maybe it wasn’t healthy, but in times like this, he was grateful as hell for it.

“I don’t get why you’re dragging this out,” Adam continued as if Ronan hadn’t said anything. “You got tired, and I should’ve known better—isn’t that enough?”

“I wasn’t tired,” Ronan said emphatically, but Adam simply made a short humming sound, unconvinced.

Ronan put his hand to his eyes—so he no longer had to look at Adam, perhaps—as if experiencing physical pain. His internal battle against the urge to act out instead of speaking, as he used to, was clear. But he held firm, his control something he had taught himself in their time together, and gritted out, “I thought you were going to leave me.”

Those words made so little sense to Adam that he could only see deceit in them. “No, you didn’t.” His lips curled in disdain. “I thought you didn’t lie.”

At that, Ronan dropped his hand and looked right at him. “I’m not lying. I was always scared that you were going to leave. Every time I was with you, you were hardly there. You were always off somewhere else, and it was happening more and more. What else was I supposed to think?

“I thought you—I thought you were seeing someone else, and maybe you were—are—I don’t know. So I was—I was just scared, okay? I was fucking _scared_. And I thought if we didn’t talk, you wouldn’t have an excuse to leave.” He smiled wryly then. “I guess I thought wrong.”

Adam’s heart was racing, his breath coming out harsh and fast, like he could just drop dead there and then. Nothing felt real to him. He was suspended above his body, watching unfamiliar hands curl into dust-colored hair, watching as the wretched figure choked out a laugh that sounded so sad it could have rivaled Orpheus’ songs— _hinc illae lacrimae_.

“God, you don’t understand anything.” Adam’s body trembled and trembled and trembled. “You don’t understand anything _at all_.”

He did not see Ronan move toward him, only felt him when he had his arms around him, encasing him in his warmth. Adam should feel trapped, but he didn’t. He felt far from it, in fact. He felt safe.

The contact—the way Ronan’s breath was whispering against his neck, the sense of someone willing to be close to him when he was so insanely out of control—slowly brought him back to himself. Adam’s eyes slid shut as he dropped his arms from his head, so overwhelmed was he by the sudden ability to breathe again—overwhelmed and grateful.

The words rumble in Ronan’s chest as he said, “So help me understand.”

It sounded so simple, but Adam only felt all the more lost at sea. There were thousands and thousands of words in the English language, but they all felt inadequate to him. They all fell flat. What was the right way to begin? Was it even possible to string years of shame, insecurity, irrationality, sadness, and pain into proper sentences? Was it possible to convey things that were meant to be felt?

Just the thought of the impossibility, the immensity of the task made Adam tired. But something in that moment felt fragile to him, and he knew if he did not say anything now, Ronan would never forgive him, and he would never forgive himself. So he clutched onto Ronan’s shirt, pressed his face into the crook of his neck, and said, “Ronan.” He sounded awful, voice brittle with honesty that cut at him like jagged bits of glass. “Ronan, I’m so messed up.”

There wasn’t a right response, he knew, but it still disappointed him to hear Ronan say, “So what?”

His heart grieved for something he did not know nor understand.

Exhaling slowly, Adam tightened his grip, trying to ground himself. “I can’t give you what you need,” he finally told him, “when I’m like this.” For once Ronan did not argue, and Adam was grateful for it. Perhaps he felt the fragility, too.

“Ronan—Ronan, I can’t think straight. All the time, my head just latches onto the wrong things, and I keep walking away not because I want to—god, I never wanted to leave you—but I just have to. I have to make sure—I _have_ to know that I’ve got things right. I _have_ to know them word for word, or at least try. I _have_ to know that they’re there, and I _have_ to do it even when I know that they are. I can’t help it—I can’t—because I _am_ crazy. That’s it; that’s the truth. There wasn’t anyone else—I can’t believe you even thought that. It’s just _me_ ; it always has been. I can’t—I can’t stop thinking about things that shouldn’t matter, and I can’t think about things that do, even when they’re standing right in front of me. And this can’t be enough.” He swallowed hard. “I can’t be enough.”

Adam mustered all his strength and released his hold on Ronan, tearing himself away when Ronan resisted. The pain was so overwhelming that he was surprised not to see his blood all over the goddamn floor. He almost choked when he said, “That’s why you should go.”

Ronan looked completely wrecked. “Do you really think I don’t know who you are? I might’ve gotten some things wrong, but I’ve always known that you get stuck in your own head, right from the time we met. Fuck, do you even remember that day? That stupid painting I hung for Gansey? You couldn’t stop looking at it, and I thought you had a fucking hard-on for Welsh kings, too. But then you finally told us that it was crooked—that was the first thing you ever said to me directly, you remember that?—and we never even realized. Yes, I thought it was weird at first, then frustrating, but I never thought it was _wrong_. I just—I just wanted to be with you.” His voice had grown soft, tentative and child-like. “I just loved you.”

Adam could not even look at him. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Ronan’s eyes flashed, defiance flaring up. “Maybe you should stop telling me what I do or do not mean. And stop telling me what to feel. I love you—there, it doesn’t have to be difficult.”

Adam cringed—he could not help it. “Ronan—” he started. _I’m not good for you_ , he was about to say, but Ronan did not let him finish.

He stepped closer, pressed their foreheads together, fist resting against Adam’s chest. “You’re sick,” he said. “So what? Why does that have to mean everything?”

“Ronan,” Adam sighed sadly, “it _is_ me. It’s not going to just go away. You can’t _heal_ me.” It was horrible to admit, but he had to do it. He moved back to look Ronan in the eyes, needing to send the message across definitively. “I can’t let you think that you could. I can’t let you hope that way. I won’t let what happened with your mom happen again.”

Ronan was taken aback by that, deeply stung. “I wasn’t thinking that. Do you think I’ve learnt nothing? I _don’t want_ to fix anyone.” He dropped his gaze, took in a deep breath, and when he looked up again, his eyes were clear as anything. “Mom’s sick, and she needs help. That’s the way it is and I don’t love her any less for it. Why do you think I can’t do the same with you?”

“Because it’s different.” _I’m not family,_ Adam did not say.

“No. It’s really not.” Ronan wrapped his hand around his wrist. “You’re unhappy, so let’s change something, you and me. Let’s try getting you help, someone to talk to. And if that doesn’t work—fine, it doesn’t work; we’ll find something else.” His eyes were almost pleading. “It doesn’t have to be difficult.”

It sounded profoundly innocent to Adam, so much so that it grated on him and he felt the urge to move away from Ronan’s touch. But he held still.

“It won’t work,” he said. “There’s no way it can.”

And just like that, Ronan was the one to pull away. He exhaled sharply, clearly rankled. “Christ, why are you so—” He broke off, silent for a long minute as he tried to collect himself, leaving Adam to fill in the blanks with every configuration of cruel words that he could come up with, which was many. Far too many. Finally, Ronan shook his head, a short movement that spoke volumes of his exasperation. He now refused to look in Adam’s direction.  “It’s like you don’t want to get better or something,” he said.

And Adam—Adam was stung by that. It was hardly a fair assessment, because in his darkest hours, even on the most violent of days, he had tried and hoped, and tried and hoped, even when there had been no real reason to. He had been trying when he left the dusty trailer park as his father looked on with disdain; he had been trying when he reached out to shake Gansey’s hand the day they met, convinced that it was a new beginning; he had been trying when he allowed himself to believe that he finally had people he could trust, people who made the word _friends_ less foreign on his tongue; he had been trying when he told them about his parents in spite of his fear of judgment, telling it as if it were a story in which he had no part; he had been trying when he let himself speak in his natural accent in front of them, bleeding out his poor heritage even as his gut turned itself inside out; he had been trying when he kissed Ronan back in his childhood bedroom in the Barns, when he gave in to being Ronan’s first and fucked him for the first time, heart straining from being so overwhelmed by things unknown; he had been trying each time he returned to Virginia, frightened to the core that he would be propelled back to the trailer park and get stuck in his nightmarish old life—and he had done all that with hope; incredible, stupid hope that persistently managed to punch through his pessimism, hope that was past common sense, perhaps even bordering on insanity. How could he explain that the source of his grief was never so much from losing control as it was from this constant hoping, despite everything that had happened in his life, despite knowing better, and being disappointed again and again and again?

“I just can’t believe that it would ever work. I want to, but I mentally, physically _can’t_ do it.” To Adam’s horror, his eyes started to blur. “I don’t want to hope for anything. Not anymore. Because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing this whole damn time, even though you might not see it. And I don’t want you to, either—I couldn’t stand that.”

No, Adam did not want to desecrate hope for anyone. He had ruined enough beautiful things.

When Ronan pulled him close, he tried to move away, only to be pulled in closer. “I know,” Ronan was saying, “I know. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you’ve been trying. But Adam, you can’t leave people behind just because you think you don’t deserve to be happy, or whatever bullshit it is that you’ve convinced yourself to believe. It isn’t fucking fair to you, and can’t you—can’t you see that it hurts the rest of us, too?”

With the saddest look on his face, Ronan kissed Adam’s palm, then pressed their foreheads together. “Try,” he implored, “just for a little longer. You’ve been doing this your whole life, pl—please just do it for a bit more. One month. One month—and if it doesn’t work, I won’t make you get help anymore, but I—we—won’t leave you, either. Adam—Adam, you don’t have to be alone.”

Ronan was making a mountainous request, and knew it, too. But there the feeling was again—that damnable fluttering of hope.

“One month,” Ronan said again. “Just one month.”

Looking at the sad lines on his face, Adam felt the depths of his regret for having hurt him and, above his inability to have any faith in Ronan’s suggestion, his trust in him—he’d always trusted him.

Hope shook its wing and took flight.

Adam gave him a shaky kiss on the mouth. “One month.”

 

* * *

 

Adam woke with July’s warmth pressing down on him. No, not July.

Ronan.

The body on him shifted, disrupted from sleep when Adam had startled awake from his nightmare. One hand crawled up to his chest in search of the frightened heart, the hammering pulse.

“Are you okay?” Ronan asked, sounding strangely awake.

Adam closed his eyes, swallowing hard, listened to the sounds around him, the beating of the fan. It had been four months. Four months. But that didn’t make it any easier.

“Not really, no.”

There was a long pause, the moment passing with Ronan’s fingers spreading and closing, then spreading again on his chest. Finally, he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Adam sighed. He caught the hand on him, fidgeted with it as he thought. He took his time. There was no rush.

When his mind settled, he griped Ronan’s hand firmly and said not for the first time—nor the last—“Yes. I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _La passion comblée a son innocence, presque aussi fragile que toute autre_  
>  — Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other ( _Memoirs of Hadrian_ , Marguerite Yourcenar)
> 
>  _Après moi, le déluge_  
>  — After me, comes the flood (Louis XV)
> 
>  _Hinc illae lacrimae_  
>  — Hence those tears ( _Andria_ , Terence)
> 
> Started in October 2016 and ninety-five percent based on real life. I just gave Adam the ending he deserves.
> 
> Thanks to Larkin for the title.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://juderagnarsson.tumblr.com).


End file.
